One of my favourite genres is trading simulators, games such as Port Royale and Patrician whereby you start off with but a penny to your name hoping to make it rich and become powerful enough to tell the rest of your town what to do. Thankfully it seems others are particularly found of this genre as during the SILLY VENTURE 2018 compo, Masters of Electric City's merchant simulator ' Merchant ' came 5th and is well worth a play if you have an Atari ST/STE.

Developed using monochrome graphics and featuring code work by bober and a fabulous soundtrack by Yerzmyey. The task of the game is to make enough money to rescue your daughter from menacing pirates who had been taken hostage after a skirmish. Beware though this wont be easy, as visiting town by town you must work out where to sell your products for the best price, and avoid further pirates attacking your caravans. Still you could always just visit a tavern or two and play dice for a little bit of extra cash, that's probably safer right?